Dr. Melody Lynch, Department of Geography, Planning, Environment

Dr. Melody Lynch is an interdisciplinary researcher with expertise in both social and natural sciences. Trained as a human-environment geographer, she uses mixed methods including ethnographic approaches, GIS, and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry to advance critical thinking about environmental sustainability and social justice in developing contexts. Her interests include marine conservation, environmental contaminants, and Indigenous health. Her research is community-based, and she has undertaken fieldwork in Southeast Asia and the Canadian Arctic.

GEOG 470: Environmental Management

URBS 338: Urban Ecology

Publications

Refereed journal articles

1.     Lynch, M., and Turner, S. (2025). Positive Futures for Urban Agriculture in Asia? A Review. Geography Compass, 19(7), e70041.

2.     Lynch, M. (2025). Planting flowers for the bees: Spirituality, emotion, and embodied subjectivities through relational practices of socioecological care. Social Science & Medicine, 365, 117592.

3.     Pham, T.-T.-H., Lynch, M. and Turner, S. (2023). Creative counter-discourses to the “green city” narrative: practices of small-scale urban agriculture in Hanoi, Vietnam. Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability, 28(2), 169-188.

4.     Fletcher, C., Riva, M., Lyonnais, M-C., Baron, A., Saunders, I., Lynch, M. and Baron, M. (2023). Epistemic inclusion in the Qanuilirpitaa? Nunavik Inuit health survey: developing an Inuit model and determinants of health and well-being. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 115(1), 20-30.

5.     Lynch, M. and Turner, S. (2021). Rocking the boat: intersectional resistance to conservation policies in the Wakatobi National Park, Indonesia. Gender, Place & Culture, 29(10), 1376-1398.

6.     Baron, M., Riva, M., Fletcher, C., Lynch, M., Lyonnais, M.C. and Laouan Sidi, E.A. (2021). Conceptualization and operationalization of a holistic indicator of health for elderly Inuit: results of a mixed-methods project. Social Indicators Research, 155(1), 47-72.

Refereed book chapters

1.     Lynch, M. (in press). Intersectionality in Ocean Studies. In (eds.) P. Foley and J. Silver, The Routledge Handbook of Critical Ocean Studies. Routledge.

2.     Lynch, M. (2025). The degradation of the Great Barrier Reef. In (eds.) J. Funke, W. Ahmed and I. Chatterjee and S. McCauley, Geography in the 21st Century: Defining Moments that Shaped Society. (pp. 407–418). New York: Bloomsbury.

Policy reports

1.     Lynch, M. (2025) Planning for urban agriculture: Environmental contaminants and food safety. Secretariat of the Kuching Healthy City Programme, Government of Sarawak. Kuching, Malaysia. 

2.     Fletcher, C., Riva, M., Lyonnais, M-C., Saunders, I., Baron, A., Lynch, M. and Baron, M. (2021). Definition of an Inuit cultural model and social determinants of health for Nunavik. Regional Board of Health and Social Services & Institut national de santé publique du Québec.

Book reviews

1.     Lynch, M. (2022). Data lives: how data are made and shape our world, by Rob Kitchin. (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2021. 262 pp.). The AAG Review of Books, 10(2), 20-21.

2.     Lynch, M. (2021). A recipe for gentrification: food, power and resistance in the city, by A.H. Alkon, Y. Kato and J. Sbicca (Eds.). (New York: New York University Press, 2020. 373 pp.). The AAG Review of Books, 9(1), 18-19.

Popular articles

1.     Lynch, M. and Noel, A. 2025. Soil stories. In Teo, W., Ariawan, A. and Nordin, R. (eds.). Our Climate Glossary. The Borneo Laboratory. Kuching, Malaysia.

2.     Lynch, M. (2021). Rocking the boat: resistance to marine conservation policies along lines of ethnicity, class and gender in the Wakatobi National Park, Indonesia. Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries Section of the Asian Fisheries Society.

Creative outputs

1.     Noel, A. and Lynch, M. 2024. Soil stories. Mixed media research creation project. Print, video, soil bio-composite tiles. Available online at: https://www.annanoel.ca/work/soil-stories.